Most Frequently Used French Words

Published on Aug. 30, 2009

Status: 90% I'm currently studying French with my partner, and if you've read any of this site, you'll notice I'm a bit of a techie. Often several of my interests collide, which is what happened today. I was searching for the "most frequent french words," and while I found some lists, nothing was exactly what I wanted. My desire was to have a PDF of the top few thousand most used French words. With the English translation next to it. In order. I've found some great resources, which I'll list now 347 most frequent French words (78% of French conversations) Wiktionary entry of 1750 most frequently used French words I've also found 100s ... Read more.

Operation Cold House

Published on June 14, 2009

Status: My house is cold. I want to start playing with simple electronics before starting Operation Field, so have created Operation Cold House. This is just simply sticking a temperature sensor onto an Arduino, linking that up to my little home "server", and uploading that to my website. I'll display some nifty graphs, too, and link it to Pachube. Stay tuned. Update: Complete! The proof is in the pudding. I now have a personal website from home (sorry, not public) that displays the daily and weekly temperature at home. The process is basically like this: my little Arduino gathers the temperature, and is polled every minute with a python script via ... Read more.

Radius Backed ACL

Published on June 14, 2009

Status: 0% I run OSSEC almost everywhere - it is one of my favourite software packages. I'm running it at home on my tiny "server", which works great. If somebody scans me, I know. I would ultimately like to be able to block them at the gateway. Because the normal Cisco router IOS doesn't have a 'shun' command (as compared to the normal firewalls), there isn't any easy way to script it (I've tried using expect, I can't see how it could be done). I found that ACLs can be stored in a database. After finding this out, I've added another project to my list: create a dynamic ACL database for my Cisco to integrate with, and block ... Read more.

Operation Field

Published on April 13, 2009

Status: 10% It is time for a new project. I've finally decided I want to do some electronics stuff - at least play around in that realm a little. However, I want to "get out and about" a little as well, so this leads me to my idea: a controllable long-range RC plane. I've been debating whether to go the embedded Linux route, or the more simple microcontroller route. One of the first things I stumbled upon was ArduPilot, a cheap Arduino-based board allowing for a UAV. However, after looking through the requirements I would have needed to purchase an RF transmitter, and they aren't cheap. This made me rethink the ArduPilot route and to evaluate what ... Read more.

Crappy Traffic Graphing

Published on Dec. 30, 2007

Status: 10% I've heard that Sydney is one of the most livable cities in the entire world -- a statement I would generally agree with. However. whoever made this statement obviously didn't drive to work every day. I've reached the conclusion that one of the biggest (and only) drawbacks to Sydney, is the traffic. So why is the traffic this bad? I have a few theories. The first theory is that Sydney drivers aren't particularly cordial. I mean, the road could be ending on the merging lane and drivers still won't let you in. I've literally sat for two blocks in near deadlock traffic with my blinker on, and nobody would let me in. Combine this with the ... Read more.

Small Business Server 2003

Published on Dec. 11, 2007

Status: I've recently been hired for a company that does consulting for small businesses. Naturally, I haven't had a huge exposure to SBS. My employer asked me to take the SBS MCP Certification, and this afternoon, I passed. The exam was pretty easy -- I think Microsoft basically took the easy questions spread out across the MCSE and dumped them into the SBS exam (some of the questions were very similar). My tips to anybody taking the exam: Really know the benefits and drawbacks of SBS; for instance, it has to be the root of the forest, Premium vs. Standard, it comes with Exchange/SQL/ISA, always use the wizards first... The exam is a showcase for ... Read more.

MCSE: Security

Published on Nov. 8, 2006

Status: My buddy Ian and myself have decided to get our MCSEs. However, Ian is a Mac lover, and I can't seem to stay away from Linux (and I'm too cheap right now to buy a MacBook). The irony might be subtle, yet we are still studying and making progress. For the most part, I have decided to take the tests in the following order: 70-290, Security+, 70-270, 70-291, 70-293, 70-294, 70-298, 70-299 Update: So, now I'm MCSE. I'm still debating whether or not to do the final Security test. I really need to get caught up with Exchange, so I might do the Messaging test at some point, but who knows. At this point ... Read more.

Xen + nVidia

Published on Nov. 2, 2006

Status: I've played with quite a bit of virtualization, especially VMWare for ages. About eight months ago I started to play around with Xen, and got it to work great, except for the fact that the nvidia driver wouldn't work with the Xen kernel. That said, I'm gonna give another go. Throughout senior high, and especially my last year, I managed to score a bunch of crappy motherboards and random parts and pieces. Six or so years later, my parents are still finding old motherboards. Considering these computers were mainly P120s with 64-128 megs of RAM, they weren't so hot. What is one to do? As you could guess, when I started university I had ... Read more.